1890 King of Southeast Asia

"National-level cooperation?" Liu Ming said doubtfully.

"Yes, Hioki is very stubborn and only accepts national-level cooperation. I think they may be afraid that we will swallow up their navy."

"After all, although this matter is dangerous, we can also fight with the British Navy on the front line of the most intense battlefield in the world. The experience left behind is priceless."

Lin Anmin nodded and said his guess by the way.

"National level is national level. Let it go. How many people can it leave? When it comes to its senses, the navy has changed a lot."

"It's really dishonest. If it stays honestly, I really may not have time to pay attention to it. It's seeking death!" Liu Ming sneered and shook his head.

Lin Anmin didn't understand the meaning of the navy's big change. It's not that he didn't know the superficial meaning of this sentence, but he didn't know what the change was.

However, looking at Liu Ming's performance, which is similar to the initial launch of the new battleship, it is speculated that the changes in the navy may not be small.

"As for the order allocation, didn't the British place an order with the Japanese? There shouldn't be no order!" Liu Ming touched his chin.

Lin Anmin's authority is already quite large. For example, the price of cooperation, similar conditions can be signed directly, but such trade orders are not counted.

This is not an aid or loan project, but a serious business cooperation project. Since it is a cooperation, it is the business of the Ministry of Commerce or the Ministry of Industry and other civil affairs departments.

His rights do not involve these, so he came to ask Liu Ming.

"As far as I know, it was placed. The intelligence of the Ministry of Commerce showed that in the first week after the end of the war, the British placed orders for dozens of transport ships with Japan, and France also provided tens of thousands of cotton clothes purchase intentions."

"But Japan does not have enough raw materials for production. The British provided a lot of advance payments, but if they import raw materials from the United States for production, the Japanese will not make money."

"Currently, only a part of the cotton textile production line is in operation, and the operation rate is very low. The French will pay only when they see the goods. They don't believe in the credit of the Japanese."

Lin Anmin almost laughed out loud when he said this.

"Then why do the Japanese want our orders? They can't make them." Liu Ming said subconsciously.

At the beginning, Japan accepted the aid from the United States, provoked the South China Empire, and tried to attack the Provisional Government to tear off a piece of fat meat.

At that time, Sun Zaizhi was in power. In Lin Anmin's eyes, Huaxia and South China were actually no different. They were all meat in the same pot. Can you tell which one made the soup?

So, now seeing that the United States did not give the Japanese any face and offered Japan a higher-than-normal price for raw materials, he was a little gloating.

Cotton is not expensive as a raw material for production. The price at this time has only increased by 40% compared with the pre-war period, but the price of cotton cloth has more than doubled, and it is even more expensive to make ready-made clothes.

It's just making clothes, Japan can do it.

However, it's not just the raw materials that have increased in price, but also the freight!

Before the war, the price from the West Coast of the United States to Japan was about ten dollars per ton, and now it is more than fifty dollars, which has increased fivefold.

Before the war, the freight price from London to Japan was 4 pounds per ton, but now it has risen to 40 pounds per ton, which has increased tenfold.

Before the war, from Shanghai to Japan, 1 ton was only 70 yen, but now no one will run even if they pay 7 yuan, because they will go there with a full load, but they will come back empty, which is a loss.

So although the distance is short, the cost is low and the profit margin is not small, the merchant ships of the Huaxia Empire are more willing to go farther, such as to India, or directly to Europe.

The price of a one-way nautical mile is low, but while sending things there, you can also send things back, and you can stop at multiple ports in the Mediterranean, Arabia, India and other places in the middle.

The increase in freight has brought about an increase in the price of raw materials for the first mate. Even if there is an order, Japan has no raw materials to complete it, because the deposit paid by the British is not enough to complete the whole set of steps such as purchasing raw materials, transportation, organizing production, and transportation.

In other words, the Japanese are stuck in the purchase and transportation of raw materials.

However, Japan's economy is indeed improving. At least Japanese ship merchants have received many orders. However, the Japanese lost many merchant ships in the war, and with the rising coal prices, the improvement is not fast.

Or, it is not as fast as normal countries.

"This is a specific matter for further cooperation. I don't understand it very well, so I didn't ask. I plan to ask the Ministry of Commerce." Lin Anmin didn't understand why Japan wanted orders when it didn't even have the start-up capital.

Before the war, Japan's cotton production actually far exceeded its own demand. It was a net exporter of cotton. After acquiring North Korea, it also planted cotton on a large scale in North Korea, requiring farmers to use more land to plant cotton.

But the war came, not the European war, but the South-Japanese War. South China imposed a protracted blockade on Japan, and Japan's cotton could no longer be exported.

Due to the stagnation of cotton exports and the large amount of accumulation, the cotton that was originally in short supply was not in demand for a while.

Cotton textile factories such as cotton spinning mills and garment factories were able to hold on for only one and a half years. The labor cost of Japanese factories was not high, and at most they could lay off employees, and the machinery and equipment were still there.

However, Japanese cotton farmers can't stand it. Let alone one and a half years, even if the cotton price is lower by 1 or 2 cents, Japanese farmers are at risk of bankruptcy.

Chinese farmers live a miserable life, and Japanese farmers are even worse.

In China, if you are a semi-self-employed farmer or a self-employed farmer, that is, a farmer who owns a certain amount of land, you don't live very badly.

In 1920, a survey of farmers was conducted. Based on a family of five, the annual income of a family below 150 yuan was the poverty line. In the wealthy province of Jiang, 50% of farmers were below the poverty line, and in Henan Province it was 85%.

But if you apply this standard to Japan, you will find that this standard is not the poverty line in Japan, but the wealth line.

In 1935, the average income of the Japanese people was 150 yen. The exchange rate of the yen was slightly lower than that of the silver dollar, and 1 yen was equal to more than 90 cents of silver dollars.

This is the average income. Generally speaking, the word average is very lame. If you average any person with a billionaire, he will also be a billionaire.

Ordinary people are generally averaged, and this is even worse in Japan, a country controlled by chaebols.

The annual income of Japanese farmers is generally only a few dozen yen, and the price of goods in Japan is extremely high. During the war, the price of 1 go of rice reached 1 yen on the black market.

1 go of rice is a unit of measurement. We usually call it a cup or a bowl. 1 go of rice is the amount of rice used by a Japanese family for one meal, about 150 grams.

Most of the rice grown by Japanese farmers will be collected at a low price, not to mention that cotton farmers may not grow rice because the government and the chaebols do not allow them to grow it.

Since the Meiji era, Japan has changed its taxation of farmers from collecting in-kind taxes on land output to collecting land taxes at a fixed percentage of the land value. Farmers have to pay 3% of the land value in cash every year.

Yen will not grow in the land, so farmers have to sell food or other products at a low price, and they have to pay transaction taxes when they sell them.

When farmers buy necessities, the prices of those pitiful goods become extremely high for various reasons.

Cotton cannot be eaten, and farmers may also be burdened with loans and need to sell cotton to pay back the money.

If they fail to pay back, they will not only face default on their debts, but they may also fail to raise enough money for next year's seeds and be unable to continue production.

Therefore, after a year and a half of blockade, cotton lost its way, and a large number of farmers in Japan went bankrupt, which in turn affected the cotton planting in the new year.

The remaining cotton can be used to make some clothing and cotton yarn and other products, but these are all stocks, which will be gone once they are used up. Such a source of raw materials cannot support industrial production at all.

As for replanting now, even if we don't consider the chaotic appearance of farmers and the fact that the cotton-growing areas have now become chaotic areas, the production line will not wait so long in terms of time.

You can buy it, but the price is expensive, and you can't make much money including the shipping cost.

"By the way, Hioki mentioned that they hope we can provide materials and transportation, and they will be responsible for processing and production. We only need to pay them labor costs."

"I have inquired about it. Japan's labor costs are indeed relatively low. When we are too busy, it is no problem to give them an order."

"At least it is better than giving it to the Americans."

Lin Anmin suddenly remembered that Hioki had expressed this idea, but this idea seemed too advanced at the moment, so he did not consider it.

Now is not the financial era, the profits of manufacturing are still considerable, and everyone is holding manufacturing in their arms, except France.

China still has a vast territory, and at least hundreds of millions of people need to work, so Lin Anmin is not very optimistic about this method.

However, after seeing the data from the Ministry of Commerce, Lin Anmin had to admit that the production capacity of the Huaxia Empire in light industry has been almost full, but it still cannot meet the needs.

Due to the actual requirements of national defense and security and the geographical location that is not suitable for growing cotton, during the Nanhua period, industrial development was mainly based on heavy industry, and a small amount of light industry also relied on purchasing cotton for self-sufficiency.

It was not until Liu Ming intervened in the Chinese silk industry that Nanhua's light industry began to develop. Now, the scale is not small, but China's own demand is also large, and there are not many that can be sold.

In this way, the Japanese way seems to work? Anyway, you only need to pay a little bit of cheap processing fees.

"OEM model? Japan is also far away! And the quality is not good... It's not impossible." Liu Ming was stunned. Just when he was about to refuse, he suddenly stopped.

No matter how inferior Japanese products are, they are industrialized products. The specifications and quality are not bad. Although they will be disliked when sold to Europe, it's okay to sell them to their own people!

You know, due to the withdrawal of British cotton yarn, this big gap has no one to fill, and the raw materials have restricted the production of the Chinese Empire.

And Japanese goods, although the quality is not very good, but because they are industrial products, the cost is not high, and the quality is better than most local cloth.

There must be that kind of high-quality local cloth, and there may be quite a few, but in fact, the quality of most local cloth is not as good as industrial products.

Moreover, the cost of industrial products is far from comparable to local cloth.

"Let the Ministry of Commerce take over this task. Does the Japanese have any rules for cooperation at the national level?"

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